Common Sense For New Hampshire

Just like last year, the percentage of the vote that came from absentee ballots was way out of line with that of most towns, and just like last year the results in the absentee votes was wildly disproportionate to the results of the people who showed up at the polls.  Below are the results with the absentees removed:

For some reason as of this writing the county web page stopped showing the mail-in votes so I was able to grab this screen shot.  All results in all towns have the same glitch so I can’t look at them now and don’t have time to anyway, but I will and will write about what I find in the next few days.

Here’s the council race with the absentees removed:

In the final results 845 people voted for Nicolay and 843 voted against her.  Of the voters who went to the polls, 685 people voted for Nicolay and 746 people voted against her.

Of course none of that matters.  Anyway you slice it, Jennifer was the clear victor in a three way race so I congratulate her and wish her all the luck.

For me, running without the obligations of being a party candidate is so much fun.  As you all know, I could have run as a Republican if I wanted to and after seeing how much opposition to Nicolay there was this year I’m thinking maybe I should have.  But I felt so bad in 2013 after seeing so much of people’s time and money wasted.  I felt I owed them a victory and that I didn’t come through for them.  I didn’t want to do that again.  This year I had no worries.

Although I never asked anyone to, the last few weeks many people got involved in helping spread the word about my candidacy and I really want to thank you guys.  Several people even wanted to make campaign donations, which of course I couldn’t take and wouldn’t take.  But you made me very happy.

One thing I take great pride in is that as an independent, none of the voters who voted for me and none of the residents who actively helped me were party zombies.  Many, many people automatically vote Democrat or Republican.  Nobody automatically votes independent.  We have to earn every single vote and I am certain that all 331 people who voted for me know exactly who I am and exactly what I stand for.  If I had actually run a campaign that number would have been much, much higher.

So at the meetings when I step up to the mic I feel I’m not speaking just for myself and I’m not speaking for hundreds of zombie voters who don’t even know who they’re voting for half the time.  I’m speaking for over 300 people who pay attention to the issues and pay attention to what I’ve been saying about them.  I feel pretty good about that.

And although I expect the counts to drop off some in the next week or so, we still have a pretty good megaphone right here: